by Dennis James
On the other hand, when postal workers are notified of a layoff, they go into the streets with drums and banners. Their position is that they are entitled to their jobs regardless of other factors, economic or otherwise. This is haq. These concepts, ta’arof and haq, play out in the diplomatic sphere as well.
The pilot announces that we will enter Iranian air space in a few minutes. There is a flurry of activity as passengers make last call orders for alcoholic drinks and women hurriedly pull scarves over their heads. Barbara reluctantly dons a headscarf, which she wears throughout the trip.
On October 3, 2008, we land in Tehran at three a.m. Amir, our guide, is a cheerful young man who speaks excellent English. Even at that time of day, Tehran’s traffic is among the worst we have seen. It is a city of eight million, growing exponentially with a high birth rate and an influx of young adults from the countryside.
One of the first things Iranians will tell a visitor is that they are not Arabs. They are Persians who speak Farsi. Their civilization has developed over several thousand years, and the unspoken implication is that they are culturally superior to the Arabs. They also point out that they practice Shiite Islam, as opposed to the Sunni Islam practiced by most Arabic-speaking peoples. The split between Shiite and Sunni Muslims arose from a dispute over who would lead the caliphate after Mohammed the Prophet’s death in 632 AD. Shiites regard Husayn ibn Ali the rightful heir, and Persians and devout Shiite Muslims everywhere celebrate him as a martyr and commemorate his death in battle with a week of mourning, grief, and self-flagellation. On the other hand, the Sunnis believe Yazid, the founder of the Umayyad Dynasty, to be the true caliph. For the outsider, the differences in belief and practice between Shiite and Sunni Muslims are difficult to parse, much less explain. These are issues that even religious scholars argue about. The two factions have been in continuous conflict since the death of the Prophet, and there appears little chance of healing the rift in the near future.
The next morning, we take a walk, as we have many times on many trips. In a park, large groups of women in headscarves and long coats are doing jumping jacks and other exercises, shouting in unison. Barbara waves in solidarity and they wave back.
Near the same park is the Archeological Museum, an impressive introduction to classical Persian culture. It is filled with reliefs and sculptures from ancient cities. One statue in particular, made of carved and polished limestone, catches my eye. Thousands of years ago, an artisan created an archer on horseback, twisted in his saddle, about to release his arrow at his pursuers. It reminds me that Persian civilization goes back to the seventh millennium BC and that, as an Empire, it ruled over the greater part of the civilized world for hundreds of years.
We also visit the famous Carpet Museum, its building shaped like a loom. Many of the carpets are centuries old, with complicated and intricate designs of flowers, animals, Koranic verses, and even hunting scenes. The oldest carpets integrate border illustrations from ancient books. Some have a central medallion, while others present an all-over pattern. The predominant color is a deep red. Also on display are two eccentric carpets, one made for a World’s Fair, incorporating portraits of world leaders from Lincoln to the Ottoman Caliph. Another portrays all the Persian kings, each with a number woven into the border, which, like a footnote, references a comment on his reign.
Amir suggests that we not tell people on the street we are Americans, but instead say we’re from Canada. We thank him for his concern but decline to take his advice—we want to experience local Iranians’ reaction to citizens of “The Great Satan” and show them that not all Americans share our government’s hostility to Iran.
People on the street in Tehran recognize us immediately as tourists with a guide. They smile and try to guess our country of origin, their guess usually being one of the European countries. When they hear we are from the United States, their smile broadens. “Welcome,” they say.
We note, also, the young women’s minimal compliance with the morality and dress laws. They wear tight jeans, makeup, lipstick, and headscarves the size of a handkerchief. Many have a Band-Aid across the bridge of their nose—a sure sign of a cosmetic nose job. This is particularly the case in north Tehran where the wealthy and well connected live. Iranian women are stunning as they are, and we’re sorry to observe that those with money feel the need to emulate western concepts of beauty.
Kerman
Kerman is a city of eight hundred thousand on the southeast plain. There we meet Sadik, our guide and driver for most of the rest of the trip. He is middle-aged, with thinning hair, glasses, an engaging smile, and a sense of the absurd. He prefers to drive his own car rather than depend on someone else. We get the feeling he’s not doing this for the money; it seems instead that he enjoys meeting people and showing them his country.
The Friday Mosque is a structure built in 1349 AD during the Safavid dynasty. It is our first direct experience of the magnificent excess of Persian mosques—and we are overwhelmed. The interior and exterior are covered with tiles that display a riot of colors—blue, pink, yellow, beige—and designs featuring flowers, calligraphy, geometric patterns. There are numerous architectural features throughout—arches, stalactites, spiraled columns.
We lunch in a bathhouse that has been converted to a restaurant. A trio of men sing traditional Arab and Persian music, one playing a stringed instrument that he strikes with hammers and the other two on percussion. One of the musicians has the ravaged face and thin body of a heroin addict. In fact, heroin is smuggled over the porous border with Afghanistan, one of the largest producers of opium in the world, and can be obtained in the underground market. This has led to a significant problem with drug addiction in Iran.
The music is sad but compelling, and the songs are mostly about unrequited love. Traditional music from the Middle East has always been one of our favorites, we tell Sadik, to which he replies that his daughter plays the cello for the Tehran Philharmonic, whose repertoire consists mostly of Western classical music.
Sadik is an excellent guide and driver, although he has the disconcerting habit of turning around to talk to us in the backseat while he is driving. I offer to sit in the front passenger seat to avoid the problem and calm our nerves, but Sadik rejects the offer. Either he thinks the front seat is not worthy, in accordance with ta-arouf, or that only he is entitled to sit up front, in accordance with haq; we can’t tell.
On the way to Shiraz, we drive through an unusual landscape—huge rocky outcrops arising out of the desert, devoid of vegetation except for stubby grasses growing in the few patches of soil. Then we descend into a wide valley striped with green orchards of apples, olives, figs, pistachios, pomegranates, and quinoa. Despite some white-knuckle moments when we pass slow gravel-hauling trucks, we arrive safely.
Again, we don’t perceive any animosity. At the few checkpoints we encounter, Sadik tells the soldier in charge that we are American tourists, which elicits big smiles and welcomes. When we stop at a gas station to refuel, a man comes over to us and, smiling, hands Barbara a pomegranate.
Shiraz
It is dark by the time we reach Shiraz. Though there are many people out in the bustling street, we are too tired to explore and go straight to bed.
In the morning, Sadik introduces us to our local guide, Fatima, a lovely, charming young woman who wears a headscarf that does little to conceal her long, shining black hair. Sadik teases her for frequently using a Farsi word that sounds like hup. Thus sensitized, we begin to hear it everywhere in Iran and then, after we get home, in Iranian movies. No one provides an accurate translation. It seems to serve as a conversation filler, much like our word so.
Another conversational quirk: whenever Iranians are unsure about the number of objects, days, people, or other measurements, they resort to the number forty. Sadik tells us that Mohammed had his revelations at age forty, Jesus wandered in the desert for forty days, Ali Baba killed forty thieves, and the mourning period following death is forty days. This is not
particularly helpful.
Shiraz is called the city of “roses and nightingales.” Fatima leads us through Eram Gardens, a vast park, up and down lanes bordered by cypress, pine, and sour orange trees, with an abundance of alcoves and benches for rest and contemplation. Her youthful energy and enthusiasm contrasts with Sadik’s calm, cool demeanor, though they obviously like and respect each other.
Like other mosques we visit in Iran, the Nasir-ol-Molk Mosque is a museum of tiles and architecture. But every mosque is unique. The visual memory we take away from this one is of the light pouring through stained-glass windows onto the lush red carpets, making the interior glow. The exterior is brick, but, as Fatima points out, a select few of the bricks are made of wood to cushion the building in case of earthquakes.
Perhaps the most moving sights in Shiraz are the tombs of the great Persian poets Saadi and Hafez. Both were followers of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, whose adherents search for direct personal experience of divine truth and knowledge. Saadi was a widely traveled moralist. His tomb is covered by a turquoise dome and surrounded by a formal garden. Hafez was a lifelong hedonist who wrote of love and wine and never left Iran. He is buried in a copper casket within a polished stone sarcophagus carved with designs and calligraphy, also in a lovely park. Dozens of freshly cut flowers lie on the stones of his tomb, evidence that locals continue to pay their respects. Iranians revere their poetry and poets, including the often-quoted Rumi and Omar Khayyam.
Street poet, Shiraz
People from all walks of life learn and recite the poems of these masters. Fatima reads one of Hafez’s poems to us in Farsi and then in English. A young man, obviously smitten, walks up and engages us in conversation in halting English, but his eyes are for Fatima, who politely but firmly tells him to buzz off.
On a side street near the market, a man sits writing on a tablet. He has a long white flowing beard and mustache. He is writing a poem, and we ask him to read it. The sound and rhythm of the Farsi verses is euphonic. As is often the case, the poem is about love, and, to this poet, about its memory.
Shiraz is a sensory delight. The only trouble with Shiraz is that there is no Shiraz in Shiraz. After the 1979 Revolution, the mullahs pulled out all the grape vines. There is no beer, either. Being caught with alcoholic beverages is a serious criminal offense. Of course, alcohol flows freely at private parties of the wealthy in north Tehran. One day at lunch, we sit in a restaurant a couple of meters from a Dutch tour group that orders beer for the table and is instead served bottles of a near-beer beverage. I won’t forget the looks on their faces when they tasted it and then looked at the labels. There was not a second order.
Based on our own taste preferences, the food in restaurants is just okay. Kabobs! Kabobs! Kabobs! Lamb kabobs, beef kabobs, chicken kabobs, fish kabobs—everything except pork kabobs. It is particularly difficult for Barbara, who eats no meat or poultry. Yogurt is her mainstay throughout the trip. However, the Persians do wonders with rice. A dish called tahdig, which is generally served at home, is made with rice, saffron, egg, and jeweled bits of fruit, and it has a delicious crust. Tahdig is rarely available in restaurants, and when it is, it’s gone in an hour.
Life in Shiraz seems less frenetic than in Tehran. Everywhere, people greet us warmly. They talk to us in the parks and on the street, asking what we think of our president Bush and about where we live (New York City elicits a big “Wow!”). They complain about the morality and dress code police, and I’m surprised at the openness with which they criticize their government. They also go as far as they can to stretch the rules. A street-side restaurant where we eat lunch overlooks a popular spot where young boys and girls in separate cars circle around to ogle one another. Whenever there is a traffic jam or accident, they stop and talk, exchange contact information, or arrange to meet. If they are not interested, they get back into their cars. It’s the closest thing we see to a singles bar in Iran.
Persepolis
Persepolis is only a short side trip from Shiraz but a vast journey from the modern Iran we have seen so far. We travel from a young republic striving to have a voice in the Middle East to the remains of ancient Persia, which ruled the civilized world centuries ago. Persepolis was the site of the palaces of the Achaemenid kings Darius, Xerxes, and Ataxerxes, the first Persian dynasty. The fact that it is very hot and dry has helped to preserve the structures; however, that, plus the absence of shade, has the opposite effect on us. Yet we are caught up in the grandeur of the past and put aside our discomfort. The few other visitors are Iranian.
Stunning bas-reliefs of rulers and noblemen are still intact. There is a twenty-five-meter wall depicting Medes and Persian soldiers (they were allies) leading emissaries of twenty-four different nations by the hand to pay homage to Darius. Huge stone bulls with human heads, bearded in the Persian style, look down impassively. Two-headed griffins open their beaks to snarl.
Carved into the sheer walls of a nearby canyon stand eight enormous Sassanian bas-reliefs showing the victory of Shapur I over the Roman Emperor Valerian in the third century AD. The Sassanian Empire lasted until the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century.
Firozabad
In a restroom on the way to Firozabad, Barbara encounters eight or nine women washing their feet in the sinks. They stop talking and stare when she enters. They wear full black chadors, but she can see their long pants underneath, in all the colors of the rainbow—a little peek through the window into what the local women wear at home or when they are in exclusively female company. They resume their conversation when she leaves.
In Firozabad, the former capital of the Sassanian Empire, sit the ruins of the winter palace of Ashakur, conqueror of the Parthians, the Romans, and just about everybody else at the time (224–241 AD). We climb a steep cliff to a fortress that overlooks the river and the road. It was built as a final stronghold for the Emperor and his family in case of overwhelming attack. The view is awesome, a dramatic landscape of great shelves of stone rising tilted out of the flat, arid plain. Here, with a sigh of relief, Fatima yanks off her headscarf and her hair tumbles out. She says we can’t be seen up here. Fatima is single and would like to get married, but she believes men are intimidated because she owns a travel agency and is self-supporting. Docile wives are usually preferred, but she’s not about to give up her independence.
On the road back to Shiraz, we stop to talk to a shepherd with his flock. He and his wife are nomads, owning 120 sheep and goats, a few chickens, a crippled dog, and a tiny tent. Life has been especially difficult due to the past two years of drought.
Dinner is in the town of Yord in a faux nomadic tent with pillowed platforms and a three-piece ensemble playing traditional music. We are surrounded by Iranians, who are all having a good time. Later, we join “forty” Shirazians on the long line for ice cream from Baba’s. I keep thinking about the nomad couple on that windswept plain. There was nothing faux about their accommodations.
Yazd
On the way from Shiraz to Yazd, there sits a one-hundred-year-old ice house, still in use. It is a seventy-foot cone-shaped structure of thick-walled masonry encircled by a spiral ledge. It looks like an enormous Dairy Queen, more graceful and energy-efficient than a modern freezer.
Yazd’s fortified walls were the last refuge of Iran’s Zoroastrian community after the arrival of the Arabs. There are two Zoroastrian “Towers of Silence” where, up to fifty years ago, the remains of the dead were carried and allowed to decompose and be eaten by birds before burial of the bones. There is also a Zoroastrian fire temple, where a fire has been burning continuously since 470 AD.
Zoroastrianism is the world’s oldest monotheistic religion. Zoroastrians believe that active participation in life through good deeds and truth telling leads to a peaceful afterlife. Fire and water are considered conduits of wisdom and life-sustaining purity. Prayers to the Creator are offered in the presence of fire. It was the official religion in Persia until the Arab conquest, after which it was suppr
essed. There remain an estimated 2.6 million Zoroastrians in Iran and India.
One-hundred-year-old ice house near Abarkuh, Yazd Province
The streets are crowded after dark, people meeting and greeting one another in the mild weather. We negotiate the warren of old town streets and alleys to emerge at the central square. A facade serves as a platform for viewing the parade of flagellants during the week commemorating the death of Husayn ibn Ali. It is backlit at night, a dramatic reminder of his sacrifice for the faith.
As we stroll around, four young men in military uniform approach. I immediately think, What have we done wrong? But they are smiling. One of them, who speaks English, asks where we are from, and they are all delighted when I answer, “The United States, New York City.” They want to talk politics, and their first question is: “What do you think of our President, Ahmadinejad?” (At the time, the US and Iran were at loggerheads over Iran’s processing of fissionable material that could be used in a nuclear weapon. Iran maintained it was only for use as fuel to generate energy.) I reply that I disagree with him on a number of social issues but support his position that Iran has a right to develop its own energy sources, especially under conditions of a boycott imposed by America and its allies. The soldiers ask questions about America, New York, and our travels. They cheerfully pose for pictures with me, and we shake hands.
Soldiers, Yazd
Propped on a table next to the bed in our hotel room is a small American flag.
Isfahan
Like Shiraz, Isfahan is a beautiful city with many parks and boulevards, as well as three magnificent bridges spanning the Zeyandeh River. The heart of the city is Imam Square, the world’s second largest public square (Tiananmen Square in Beijing is the largest). It was once a polo field where matches were played for the amusement of royalty but is now a green space for the public to enjoy. Two sides of the Square are lined with workshops of craftsmasters. Silversmiths, coppersmiths, miniaturists, textile purveyors, carpet salesmen, woodwork and inlay artisans, tile crafters, and makers of the local sweet nougat ply their trades.
